


the depths

by besselfcn



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Captivity, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Problems with Reality, Recovery, Rescue, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:29:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Geralt still arrives. In dreams, in waking visions. When he closes his eyes he sees him waiting--his swords run through the centers of the men holding Jaskier down, his arms reaching out and pulling Jaskier in and then blackness, blackness, blackness.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 70
Kudos: 889





	the depths

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [глубина](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23397127) by [gronkowski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gronkowski/pseuds/gronkowski)



> "I would like to see Jaskier captured & tortured", said everyone ever, and so it shall be
> 
> Credit to Vertizontally for some of the dialogue here.

Geralt comes to save him on the third day.

And the fourth, and the sixth. After that time smears so thick and twisted that counting days is meaningless; he keeps time by how often he’s fed, and then when that becomes erratic and unreliable, he stops keeping time at all. 

But Geralt still arrives. In dreams, in waking visions. When he closes his eyes he sees him waiting--his swords run through the centers of the men holding Jaskier down, his arms reaching out and pulling Jaskier in and then blackness, blackness, blackness. 

When he wakes from fitful dreams spent trudging through the forest at Geralt’s side and finds himself still chained by the neck to a spike driven through stone he thinks he might have the energy to cry, but more often he just heaves and curls up tighter and tries to fall back into sleep.

Sometimes Geralt does save him, however far away he is. Sometimes the men who come to _entertain_ themselves with him want more. They want a show. 

“I want to see you come,” one of them tells him. “Ain't gonna give you a rest ‘till you do. Wanna see how much you fucking love this.”

 _Yeah_ , says the fragmented corners of Jaskier’s mind that still have the sense for a sharp tongue. _Being raped in a dungeon by some two-bit ransomer is just how I like to get off_.

He closes his eyes and pushes the world out of his mind. He pictures white hair and strong, calloused hands. This is a game. They’re in a tavern cellar, they’re playing make-believe. If he says stop it all will stop. This is a game and he’s safe, and when he’s done he’ll have a bath, he’ll curl up in bed, Geralt will kiss the marks he left across his chest--

He comes, and the man laughs, and leaves him on the floor.

It goes on, and on, and on.

Geralt comes to save him.

They break his fingers, the ones on his right hand, one man crushing them under his boot while another rides him.

Geralt wraps him in his cloak and it smells like burnt wood and the coppery taste of blood. 

They speak of killing him, but someone objects. He’s fun like this, they say. He’ll die soon anyway, carrying on like this, don’t get rid of him just yet. He gets soup that evening, and doesn’t care what it’s drugged with; he drinks it to the last drop.

Geralt carries him out, lifts him up like a babe and takes him all the way to the edge of the forest before he wakes up and crashes back down. 

One of them, shoved down Jaskier’s throat, laughs and says, “Are you going to write a song about me one day, little whore?” and Jaskier wants to cry and wants to bite down on him and rip his cock off and wants to watch him die but mostly he wants to tell him that nobody wants to hear songs that end like this.

Geralt comes to save him. 

Yennefer is here, this time, and he’s irritated with his mind for once. If he’s going to have an agonizing fantasy about getting out of here alive, it might as well spare him the suffering of spending time with a sorceress.

“Oh, sweet fucking God,” she says. 

They don’t have time for this. He’ll wake up soon. He just wants a moment, a second of warmth.

“Open the portal,” Geralt growls. Oh, he sounds angry. Beyond angry. Jaskier’s never heard him like this; he doesn’t know why he’s hearing it now.

He hears the sound of crumbled stone, of metal scraping. The chain. Geralt pulled it from the wall.

Something about it--the practicality of it, the bits of reality that never make it into his fantasies--jolts him into lucidity for a brief and horrifying moment.

“Is this real?” he rasps, and hears a string of colorful swearing from Yennefer’s mouth before Geralt picks him up, holds in close, and it’s blackness. Blackness.

He wakes again in the carriage, all at once, like a gasping breath after being submerged. The collar’s gone; he doesn’t know how. He tries to open his eyes, but something warm and liquid is flowing through him, keeping them heavy. So he lets them stay shut.

There’s hands across his body, but he barely registers that anymore.

“Fuck, you can see his _ribs_.”

“Stop.” Geralt. He sounds like he’s going to be sick.

“I need to know what I’m dealing with. At this point generic healing magic isn’t going to do much for him besides let him get some sleep.”

They’re both quiet. The carriage rattles, tosses him back and forth. Someone’s got his head held steady, but he can’t tell who.

“I--” Geralt starts. He exhales, like a snarl. “I can _smell them on him_ , Yennefer.”

Jaskier wants to shrink away. He wants to disappear. He wants, irrationally, to go back, to let them find him dead instead of this.

“We’ve got him,” Yennefer says. “We’ve got him.”

He lets himself stop fighting and slips back down.

Consciousness comes over the next few days only when he reaches for it, swimming up from that great and pitch-black depth of sleep. 

They bathe him, both of them at once; Geralt doesn’t stop swearing and Yennefer doesn’t speak. He drinks broth poured into his mouth by a slow and steady hand, then vomits it up a few hours later. He wakes screaming once in agony as his insides knit themselves together; Yennefer has a hand on his forehead and says _shh, I know, I know, trust me, I know_ , and when it’s over he sobs until he sleeps again. 

Geralt is there. His hands, his voice. He’s devastated. It’s the only word Jaskier knows for the way he acts; quiet and angry and gentle all at once. 

Jaskier fighs the pull back down whenever he has the energy to. 

If he doesn’t, he’s terrified he’ll wake up on the dungeon floor. 

The sun is in his eyes. He realizes it before he realizes he’s awake; _real_ wakefulness, not a temporary thing to cling to. He puts a hand over his face and groans.

“Good morning,” Yennefer says. 

He peeks an eye open. Just her. Figures.

“Where’s Geralt?” he asks. He tries to ask. His voice is raw; throat feels like it’s still bleeding. He doesn’t recognize the sound. His voice. HIs voice. 

Yennefer hands him a potion that he downs in a single gulp; it’s like honey all the way down.

“Sent him off to buy you some new clothes,” Yennefer says. She sits at the side of the bed. “He wouldn’t stop hovering, so I had to give him chores to do.”

Jaskier doesn’t make himself try to speak again. He looks around the room; a high ceiling, large windows to the right. Mostly empty save for the bed he’s been nestled into, linens piled all around like a babe in a crib. 

“Tissaia’s house,” Yennefer says. “Safest place I could think of to take us. Can’t portal in or out, can’t be tracked.”

Jaskier doesn’t bother asking who the hell Tissaia is.

“I take it I’ll live,” he says instead, experimentally flexing his fingers and toes. They feel stiff and sluggish, but moveable. Even the right hand, fingers shockingly un-mangled. 

Yennefer lets out a breath. “Just about,” she says. “Do you want me to--tell you?”

He stares at her uncomprehending until she gestures vaguely to his body. 

“Oh,” he says. “The lurid details. Yes. Sure. I might as well know what parts of me are going to hurt from here on out.”

She smiles wryly at that. “Nothing should be permanent,” she says. “I’m a very fucking good sorceress, I don’t know if you’ve heard.”

“At length, regrettably.”

“Mm. Fixed your hand there for you, should be good as new after a couple of days. But you’ll have some other lingering pain for a few weeks. Mostly your stomach. You had a lot of--internal damage, from various sources. Not to mention malnourishment. I did what I could, but it will still take time.”

He nods, a hand splayed over his stomach instinctively. Took plenty of blows, he so vividly recalls. Not surprising something burst. 

“And the…” he says, and trails off. He gestures vaguely to his throat. 

“Oh, yes,” Yennefer says quickly. "Your voice is going to be shot for a few weeks, but it’ll recover so long as you give it some rest.”

It’ll recover. Oh, it’ll recover. He exhales a heavy breath he didn’t know he was holding; she looks at him with a sympathy he didn’t know sorceresses were capable of. 

“Don’t worry, Jaskier,” she tells him, honestly gentle. “You’ll be out annoying tavern patrons with a rendition of _Toss a Coin_ sooner than later.”

He tries to laugh, but it just makes him cough, and soon enough it’s all just pain so he lays back in bed and stares up and tries not to think of anything at all. 

And Yennefer is still there, her fingers gripping the edge of the mattress. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner,” Yennefer says softly, and Jaskier closes his eyes again. Not this, he thinks. Not now. “We--”

He hears the door crash open downstairs, and Geralt’s voice carrying through the halls: “I bought some fucking clothes, Yennefer.”

Jaskier’s heart is in his throat, his head swimming. His hands ache, suddenly, with the need to see him, to touch him, to know that he’s real. 

Yennefer sees it across his face. She must. She stands, her skirts in her hands. 

“I’ll go fetch him,” she says. 

(For a moment, she seems she might do something else, something foolish--lean down and kiss his forehead, maybe, like a child put to sleep. But then she looks away and the moment disspitates.)

He hears them speaking, vaguely; nothing that makes a lick of sense, through the ache in his head and the persistent ringing in his ears. But he hears his name, briefly-- _Jaskier’s awake--_ and then the crash of footsteps getting closer, Yennefer shouting _let him rest, Geralt_ and Geralt not unkindly but not insincerely yelling _fuck off_ , and then the door’s wrenched open and Geralt’s there. 

He’s there. He’s real. 

A bath and a warm bed and Geralt is there afterwards, here still, solid and warm and real against the backdrop of an estate that still feels like a dream, but Geralt is real, his hands, the scent of him as he pulls Jaskier into his chest and stares over his head, holds onto him and oh--

Jaskier’s crying. He realizes it from somewhere outside himself, hears the sniffling that turns into a sob and then another and then a howling rage, ripping out of his chest, and his hands twist into the fabric of Geralt’s shirt and Geralt says _I’m sorry, we have you, I’m sorry, I'm sorry_. 

It’s four months later that Yennefer finds him up at four in the morning, having slipped out from between the two of them while they slept to find some decent lamplight.

“Writing a new tune?” she asks.

He crumples the parchment in his hands. “No,” he says. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“Three very different answers,” she observes.

He scowls. She scowls right back. 

Jaskier shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I thought I’d write about--I don’t know. The white wolf’s heroic rescue of his most loyal companion.”

Yennefer softens. She’s got a way of doing that--something about how she slumps down a little bit, stops looking like she’s got a broom shoved so far up her ass it’s making her stand up straight. 

“So what’s wrong with it?” she asks. 

He crumples another piece of paper rather than look at her. “I leave out the parts nobody wants to hear about,” he says, “like the sorceress--”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

“--and, you know, all the many days of rape and torture preceding said heroic rescue. But then it’s all… well, it’s a lie, isn’t it.”

Yennefer regards him. “Lying in your songs has never stopped you before.”

He doesn’t need to say, _this is different._ She knows. 

“So don’t leave it out,” she says. 

He almost laughs, until she realizes she’s serious. 

“I don’t think it’ll be a very popular ballad,” he says. 

She hums. She’s picked up that habit and he doesn’t think she realizes it. It’s, regrettably, cute. 

“Does it need to be?” she asks. 

He stares at her. She stares right back.

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” she says, and she’s back to that posture again. Rigid. Standing up tall as she can. “Come to bed when you’re done with the suffering poet routine.”

“Goodnight, Yennefer,” he says. “I shall.”

She leaves. He turns back to the desk, spattered with ink and covered in half ruined pages. 

In his chest, he starts to hum a tune; mournful and then angry. Loud, cacophonous, an orchestra of notes to be yelled at the top of one’s lungs--and then quiet. Like a body coming in to shore. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me many places @besselfcn


End file.
